The Harvest Blog

Through the coming decade, what we eat will be shaped by new tastes, new innovations, and primarily, by new concerns held by consumers. Food businesses will have to offer more personalized food products, more sustainable packaging, and more international tastes (Japanese snack boxes, anyone?) delivered to our doorstop. Younger generations will be a driving force of change in food ways, and food producers are tuning into their concerns and habits. Our culture has shifted from considering food as an energy and sensory pleasure source to an accessible way to relate to culture, to nature, and to friends and communities.

Cooking is often an expression of ourselves—our values, our lifestyles, and our cultural traditions. The holidays present an opportunity to express these values as we attempt to weave them into our daily lives, including conscious eating and sustainable living. It is a time to reevaluate our traditions, and take a stand on practices that don’t contribute to a robust, healthy food system. It is also a time to reinforce and celebrate traditions that we can feel good about, from sourcing our food in an ecologically responsible way, to making recipes that repurpose food waste into soups, stocks, and preserves. By being aware of what we (literally) bring to the table at the holidays, we can conscientiously share our ethics with family and friends.

By now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the world is facing a global water crisis. What is less apparent is how this crisis is intimately tied to how we source, produce, and consume food. In the face of drastic warnings of reduced freshwater around the world in coming decades (UNESCO has explicitly warned that climate change will alter the availability of water and threaten water security), it is important to identify what, exactly, a lack of freshwater means. What are the most urgent risks, and where will it take its highest toll? What are our best areas for innovation?

The soil microbiome is crucial to our food future and global food security. It demands our attention in regards to both human health and the health of our planet. If we continue to degrade the earth’s arable land at our current pace, then the challenge of feeding 10 billion people by 2050 may become insurmountable. By supporting the soil microbiome, we can sustain long-term farming yields and thereby incomes, reduce greenhouse gas emissions (and potentially sequester additional CO2), and reduce farm runoff into rivers and lakes.

We look at which innovations in technology have potential to change our food system, and which ones might be more about novelty than sustainability. Considering diverse technologies ranging from blockchain to 3D printed food, it is important to consider which will cultivate a sustainable and productive food system.

Medicinal mushrooms like reishi, chaga, and cordyceps are taking the U.S. market by storm. While these fungi have long been central components of Chinese medicine and eastern traditions, the growing interest in wellness and preventative care among U.S. consumers is opening up opportunities for entrepreneurs to introduce these ancient ingredients to a new generation of health enthusiasts.

This month, as we celebrate the graduation of Jewels of the Forest, Metabrew and Zoni Foods from our accelerator program, we asked our founders what social impact and culinary tradition mean to their work.

If a weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered, then seaweed is ready for rebranding. This food source, underutilized in the Western world, is rich in vitamins and minerals such as iron and iodine. To cultivate, it requires no fresh water, no land, no chemical inputs, and no fertilizers, and it creates no nitrogen runoff. Furthermore, sea vegetables sequester carbon as they grow, helping to combat the effects of global warming and mitigate ocean acidification. When it comes to feeding a global population of 9.7 billion people in 2050, seaweed could play a large role in finding sustainable solutions.

Food from the “industrialized” food system is less nutritionally dense than organic, sustainably-grown food. Low-nutrient foods grown with synthetic chemicals have spread across the world, often targeted to the poor segment of the population in developed and emerging nations alike. This food and agriculture problem is too big to fix solely with philanthropic donations or government policy—even assuming a fully favorable policy environment and the effective deployment of philanthropic dollars. Here’s the good news: after decades of effective storytelling, public education, and advocacy by activists, we have a generation of Millennials embracing a broad-based behavioral shift toward healthy, sustainable food options.